Wrongfully convicted

Dinesh Kumar’s case isn’t the first time a Canadian has been acquitted after a long stay in jail. Here are some others:

DONALD MARSHALL

Donald Marshall’s ordeal began late one night in 1971 when he and Sandy Seale, a female acquaintance, took a walk through a park in Sydney, N.S. The teenagers attempted to rob an older man named Roy Ebsary. A scuffle ensued and Seale was fatally stabbed.

Police launched an investigation that focused on Marshall. Police charged him with murder, and the 17-year-old aboriginal was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

He languished there until 1982, when the RCMP reviewed his case. Marshall was acquitted the following year. Ebsary was charged and convicted of manslaughter. He spent a year in jail.

In 1987, a royal commission began to investigate the case. Two years later, it concluded that “the criminal justice system failed Donald Marshall Jr. at virtually every turn.”

The commission also determined that the police and judiciary had acted unprofessionally and incompetently, and that racism was a factor in the wrongful conviction. It recommended an independent review mechanism be instituted to look into allegations of wrongful conviction.

Marshall was awarded a lifetime pension of $1.5 million in compensation.

Marshall had another brush with the law in 1996, when he was convicted for illegally catching and selling eels out of season and without a license.

Three years later, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that his activities were valid under treaties between aboriginals and the colonial government in the 1760s.

Three years ago, Marshall was arrested and charged with attempted murder for allegedly attempting to run over a man with his car after a New Year’s Eve party. The charges were dropped after both men agreed to participate in a healing circle.

Marshall, who suffered from pulmonary disease, died in August 2009. He was 55.

STEPHEN TRUSCOTT

One of the most controversial cases in Canadian legal history is rooted in the 1959 murder of 12-year-old Lynne Harper.

Harper was seen with 14-year-old Vancouver student Stephen Truscott before she disappeared near Clinton, Ont. Her naked body was found two days later; she had been raped and strangled.

Truscott was sentenced to hang, and spent four months in the shadow of the gallows – Canada’s youngest ever death row inmate — until his death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. Paroled in 1969, Truscott disappeared into an anonymous existence in a southern Ontario city.

On Aug. 28, 2007 – 48 years later – the Ontario Court of Appeal unanimously overturned Truscott’s conviction and acquitted him, declaring the case "a miscarriage of justice" that "must be quashed."

The judges went on to say, however, that "the court is not satisfied that the appellant has been able to demonstrate his factual innocence."

In July 2008, the Ontario government announced it would pay Truscott $6.5 million in compensation for his ordeal.

DAVID MILGAARD

David Milgaard was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison for the 1969 murder of Saskatoon nursing aide Gail Miller.

Milgaard appealed to the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal but his case was dismissed.

A man who lived in Miller’s neighbourhood, Larry Fisher, was arrested for the rape of a woman in North Battleford in 1980. Several months later, Fisher’s ex-wife called the Saskatoon police, saying she believed Fisher killed Miller.

But the police did not investigate the lead, and Milgaard languished in prison for almost two decades while his mother, Joyce, tried to garner support for her son’s case.

Justice Minister Kim Campbell asked the Supreme Court of Canada to review of the case in 1991, but it was again set aside. It took another five years for DNA evidence to clear Milgaard of the crime.

He was awarded $10 million by the Saskatchewan government in 1999, the same year Fisher was found guilty of raping and murdering Miller.

A provincial judicial inquiry was released in 2008. It concluded that “the criminal justice system failed David Milgaard.”

ERIN WALSH

It took a jury just one hour to find Erin Walsh guilty of the 1975 second-degree murder of Melvin (Chi Chi) Peters in Saint John, N.B. The prosecution saw it as an open-and-shut case, and Walsh received a life sentence with no parole before 10 years.

Walsh’s appeals to the New Brunswick Court of Appeal were dismissed in July and November 1982.

In December 2006, however, his lawyers sought a review of the murder conviction from the federal government after new evidence came to light.

In February 2008, Justice Minister Rob Nicholson ordered a review of the murder conviction because of the new evidence, suggesting a miscarriage of justice likely occurred.

A month later, the New Brunswick Court of Appeal acquitted Walsh of the crime and overturned his conviction.

Walsh, a native of Ontario who had maintained his innocence for more than 32 years, was dying of colon cancer and wanted his name cleared.

GUY PAUL MORIN

In 1985, Guy Paul Morin was arrested for the abduction and murder of a Christine Jessop, the nine-year-old girl who lived next door to him in Queensville, Ont.

The little girl’s decomposing body was discovered 50 km east of Queensville in December 1984, almost three months after her abduction. An autopsy revealed she had died of stab wounds and was likely raped.

Morin was charged in the murder. He proclaimed his innocence, and was acquitted in the first trial due to lack of anything but circumstantial evidence.

But the Crown appealed the verdict and he was tried again. The nine-month trial in 1992 ended with a conviction – despite evidence pointing to police wrongdoing and controversy about Crown tactics.

He was sentenced to life in prison. The following year, however, he was granted bail amid a groundswell of support for his case.

In 1995, DNA evidence finally ruled out Morin as the killer, and he was exonerated. An inquiry into the case uncovered evidence of police and prosecutorial misconduct as well as misrepresentation of forensic evidence by the Ontario Centre of Forensic Sciences.

IVAN HENRY

In 1983, Ivan Henry was convicted on 10 charges of raping eight women in Vancouver between May 1981 and June 1982. He acted as his own lawyer at his trial.

After he was convicted, Henry was declared a dangerous offender and slapped with an indefinite prison sentence. But he maintained his innocence.

Perseverance paid off for Henry. He filed 55 appeal applications before finally being granted one.

After Vancouver Police reopened the investigations into 25 unsolved sexual assaults, doubts were raised about Henry’s guilt. Prosecutors said some of these cases were similar to Henry’s, and eventually, DNA evidence cleared him.

One of Henry’s three lawyers, David Layton, said the case against Henry was "polluted" and "farcical." "There was no basis to convict him in 1983 and there’s no basis to do that today."

Henry was 63 years old when he was finally freed in late October 2010. According to his lawyer, the time he wrongfully served in prison – 27 years – is considered one of the longest on record in Canada, his lawyer said.

WILLIAM MULLINS-JOHNSON

In 1994, William Mullins-Johnson was found guilty in Sault-Ste. Marie, Ontario of a heinous crime on a loved one – the first-degree murder and sexual assault of his four-year-old niece, Valin. She was found in her bed – face down, in a pool of vomit.

But it was later revealed those crimes never actually happened.

Disgraced pathologist Charles Smith and three other doctors testified against Mullins-Johnson. Smith himself incorrectly interpreted physical evidence, accusing Mullins-Johnson of sodomizing and strangling his niece. Smith also lost evidence while Mullins-Johnson’s case was being reviewed.

It was ultimately determined the little girl actually died of natural causes, and she was not sexually assaulted.

Mullins-Johnson was set free in 2007. In October 2010, the Ontario government awarded the then-40-year-old with a $4.25-million settlement.

"No amount of money is going to fully compensate Mr. Mullins-Johnson for the hardship that he has endured and that he will continue to endure," said David Robins, Mullins-Johnson’s lawyer. "He spent 12 years in prison for a crime he did not commit and was labelled a sex offender.

"To this day, I’m sure there are people who still wish to continue to label him as a sex offender. No amount of money can turn back the hands of time and give him those 12 years back and erase this ordeal from his mind."

ROBERT BALTOVICH

Robert Baltovich’s nightmare began June 19, 1990 after the disappearance of his 22-year-old girlfriend Elizabeth Bain.

Five months after she disappeared, police charged Baltovich with first-degree murder. Her body was never found, and Baltovich maintained his innocence.

In 1992, a Toronto jury convicted him of second-degree murder.

Nearly a year later, Paul Bernardo was charged in connection with a series of rapes in the Scarborough-area, and a private investigator drew parallels between the cases that could help prove Baltovich’s innocence. An appeal for Baltovich was then filed.

On March 31, 2000, eight years to the day he was convicted of killing his girlfriend, Baltovich was released on bail. After further delays, his appeal was finally heard in 2004.

In April 2008, on the first day of his new trial, a Toronto jury found Baltovich not guilty in Bain’s death.

Two years later, Baltovich launched a $13-million civil suit against the province of Ontario. His lawyers continue to suggest the "Scarborough Rapist," now known to be notorious killer Bernardo, was responsible for Bain’s disappearance. The suit alleges investigators "should have realized that the Scarborough Rapist was a realistic suspect in the case."

Lawyer Harvey Strosberg said that testing the Bernardo theory is not the question being asked by the suit. "It’s a question of it being another piece of relevant evidence that wasn’t disclosed (by the police and the Crown)," he said.